


Mother's Intuition

by Maels (queen_ypolita)



Category: Coronation Street
Genre: 1000-3000 words, mothers and sons, what if
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-11-13
Updated: 2004-11-13
Packaged: 2017-10-04 13:35:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_ypolita/pseuds/Maels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Eileen knew Todd was gay before Todd did?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mother's Intuition

Looking back, she wasn't sure how long she had suspected. Todd had always been different. Different from Jason, different from any other man or boy she had ever known. Different from herself, if that meant anything. Todd was always a bit of an enigma; it was Jason who was more like her, in good and in bad.

For a long time she didn't know what the difference meant. Todd was reserved and quiet and studious and mostly kept to himself. As far as she knew, he was generally liked at school but he didn't seem to have close mates. When she asked him, in a worried roundabout way, she got the impression that he was happy as long as he had her and Jason. It was rather reassuring, although she knew very well that Jason wasn't always that happy to have Todd following him and his mates but she knew that deep down Jason would have done anything for Todd; it was just that he was equally puzzled by Todd at times as she was.

It took her a long time to realise one potential source of the difference. Todd didn't seem at all interested in girls and going out and all that. At first she didn't think it was anything; after all, not everyone is the same and if Jason had been interested in girls forever, that was no reason to assume Todd would do all the same things at just the same age. It seemed to fit in with everything else Todd was. But then she observed him a couple of times when his school mates were over at the house, studying, watching television or playing board games. There was something in there that she couldn't quite out her finger on. At least not at first.

She had put two and two together a long time before realising she'd done it. When she finally knew what all the observations and thoughts she'd had over the years meant, first Candice and then Sarah had entered the picture and she felt her certainties crumbling the moment she had realised she had known for ages. She wondered if she had been wrong, reading into the signs something that had never been there. The thought gave her pause. Did she really know him so badly? She'd been getting ready to talk to him, to help him – if he wanted her help – making it as easy for him as she could manage. She had always thought she knew him; now she began to suspect that maybe she had only seen what he allowed her to glimpse.

Despite the girls' presence in Todd's emotional life she could never completely rid herself of her one-time certainties. She hated the way he threw himself into his little teenage romance with Sarah. At times she felt she was watching a perfect show of a boy and the girl next door turning from best friends into tentative lovers; the impression that it was a show, not for real remained regardless of how many times Todd assured her that he loved Sarah. She knew Todd would bite her head off if she ever suggested that he was doing it for the show. And she tried to be fair to him – it was real to him and that was what mattered.

Then came the exam fiasco. At first she couldn't bring herself to understand why he did it. Or more to the point, didn't do it, take the exams and move on with his life, with or without Sarah. So she took the easy way out and blamed Sarah for wanting to put a ball and chain on him to keep him to herself. But after a few days, when she was calmer and more inclined to analyse his motives rationally something clicked. It wasn't anything Sarah had done, it was about her little boy being terrified. There was a big world out there, full of all kinds of opportunities. He could be everything he wanted out there and it scared him to death and made him cling to the things he knew. She wasn't sure why and she never managed to put her confused thoughts into coherent sentences in order to talk to him, properly, without reverting into yet another shouting match which seemed to become her only form of communication with Todd these days.

She hadn't thought things could get any worse but when Sarah got pregnant she knew she had been wrong. And the way she found out, as an accidental result of what looked like one of several squabbles between Todd and Nick. Something must have happened between the two, she was sure of it. She tried to indicate to Todd that it was alright, that she would be fine with it. But of course he took it the wrong way and saw it as a slight directed at his precious little Sarah and wouldn't listen to her. And because he didn't listen to her; in fact he was determined not to listen to anything she had to say, he did his utmost not to hear her words and stop and think about them. She hated the situation, she knew, and he, she suspected, knew too but was determined not to sway from the path he, as she was beginning to realise, thought was set out for him. The sad and sickening part of it was that no one else had such unbending expectations for him; those were ones he had imposed on himself and made himself believe were the only right ones.

For a moment she wondered if she could talk to Nick, get him to explain what – if anything - had happened. But she decided against it immediately, partly because she didn't know Nick well enough to ask, partly because she was sure Nick would taunt Todd with the news of her intervention. Which would only make things worse between her and Todd. There was nothing to it but to wait and hope that one day Todd would come to her.

Eventually, he did. She had noticed that he looked unhappy but there hadn't really been any time or opportunities to talk about it with him. Always assuming of course that he would have been willing to talk about himself with her in the first place, which, after the fights about the news of Sarah's pregnancy, wasn't certain. She had resigned herself to the idea that he would come to her when he was ready and she would have to pick up the pieces of his life turned into one big mess. He was her son and she had always been prepared for it.

Afterwards she felt she had dealt with everything abysmally. She had brought up Sarah's name, she hadn't really understood what he was telling her. And she had really been thrown by his determination to stick with Sarah. In fact, after calming down and feeling rather ashamed of letting him down by blowing her head off, she realised he hadn't really come to her for support, for the courage to take the big leap. Well whatever, the first small step if that seemed more appropriate. But he had, at least to an extent, come to confess, to talk it out of himself, to purge himself of unwanted feelings and confusion. She wished more than ever that she hadn't lost her cool like that. She sighed; it wouldn't have been like her if she hadn't. Screaming and shouting was her way.

Todd had said he was in love with the bloke. She wondered what the bloke, Karl, was like. From what Todd had said, it didn't sound too good but she couldn't think of anything else to do, so she eventually sought him out. Their talk didn't much help her. It was interesting to hear about another woman's reaction to her son but it was hardly relevant to her and her son. She was fine with Todd being gay, what she wasn't comfortable with was the way he approached his feelings. For a fleeting moment she wished her gay son would be something like Karl – she could tell he shared an affinity with herself. But the moment passed. Todd was her son; she wouldn't want him to change. Except maybe to be braver about himself. She knew that if her son hadn't been involved, she would have had a lot of sympathy for Sarah. But not in the circumstances, although she had long since acknowledged it wasn't her fault that Todd had got himself into the mess – all that was Todd's own making.

And maybe hers, to an extent. She had hoped to instil a certain set of values into both her sons. With Jason she had failed; he showed a similar disregard to women as all her men had always done but which was familiar to her. Todd had taken his promises about becoming a better man more seriously and somewhere down the line had lost the plot; the ideal had become perverted and Todd no longer could tell between what was right for the all parties concerned, not just for the girl who would get hurt sooner or later anyway because that was just how life worked in general. It scared her, how could she had got it so wrong? Had she realised sooner, like she had certain other things, she might have been able to do something to it… now it was waiting for the inevitable disaster.

The fallout was worse than she could have imagined, yet her own relief was immense. At least all of it was now in the open; Sarah knew, Todd no longer tried to hide from it. Of course it meant insults from the Platts, gossip in the Street and trouble with Jason but all that was expected and she was more than willing to stand by Todd in everything. She gladly defended him to everybody, kept a brave face when she really wanted to cry. It didn't stop her from giving Todd a piece of her mind about how he handled everything – if he had really taken Sarah's wellbeing to heart, he shouldn't have cheated on her, if he had been honest with her from the start, she might have been able to spare them from the humiliation of Gail Platt informing all the Street of the details of his sex life and betrayal. But when all that was said and done she felt almost confident. Things would sort themselves out eventually. Sarah and her family would calm down, the neighbours would get used to the idea, maybe even the sight, of Todd with a boyfriend and there would be other things to gossip about. Todd and Sarah would sort out matters relating to the children. Everything was going to be alright.

But then Sarah went into labour too soon. She was glad to be there at the time; it was easier that way than finding out from someone else. But at the hospital she was beginning to think that Todd seemed doomed to have everything the hardest way. She vented her spleen on Karl who happened to passing and regretted it immediately. If her earlier intervention had pushed Todd into his arms, she was sure this intervention would only make him push Todd away. And she was right; Todd never mentioned him again within her hearing, so drawing the right conclusions wasn't exactly difficult. She just wished she had talked about her suspicions earlier on, risking Todd flying off the handle; it might have saved a lot of grief. She still couldn't explain how she had known when Todd repeatedly made the point of not having known until it was too late.


End file.
